Sisters in the Wind(11)

The best way to honor Bridget was to tell my dad that I was ready for her to adopt me. He had the paperwork ready. The adoption was finalized in October of 2003.

My dad died two months later.

My new mother was all I had left in the world.





WHEN I WAS THIRTEEN


2003

My dad needed another surgery to remove even more of his large intestine. My parents insisted the surgery was routine. They didn’t want me to miss school. It was the first semester of my freshman year at Harbor Springs High School.

It wasn’t cancer that killed him, at least not directly. Surrounded by the best medical team in northern Michigan, my dad had a heart attack and went into cardiac arrest on the operating table while being put under general anesthesia.

I walked from school to the library downtown, expecting to wait for my mother to fetch me. Instead the librarian told me to go directly home.

I didn’t immediately think anything was wrong, only that my mother must have been busy with post-surgery errands. In hindsight, I had missed the clue for what it was. From then on, I’d pay attention to changes in expected patterns.

Arriving home, I found our east-facing house already in shadow. It wasn’t until I had hung my coat and backpack on my designated wall hooks in the tiny entryway and placed my Adirondack boots in the pebble-filled boot tray that I stepped into the living room and noticed my mother at the dining nook. She sat in her usual chair, the one my dad had ordered to match the set of two when we became a trio. She gripped a glass of water, only a few sips left. Except it wasn’t water, I realized. The bottle of vodka on the counter was another clue, a glaring disruption of normal patterns.

She told me about my dad. Her exact words were lost to the darkness that swallowed me whole. She did not rise to embrace me. She spoke in a monotone; even her voice was frozen in place. Her only movement was a shaky hand that made the clear liquid slosh in the glass as she brought it to her lips.

I retreated to my bedroom, numb with disbelief. I sat at the edge of my bed, as stiff as my mother had been at the dining table. Though I had no recollection of the rest of the night, I awoke the next morning still in my school clothes and surrounded by the thirteen birthday books my dad had gifted me.

We moved like zombies in our strange new world. We grieved parallel to each other, in straight lines that never intersected. I did not thank her for continuing to provide breakfast bars for me to take to school every morning, and she did not chide me for it. Oddly enough, I felt closer to her than ever before.

At the visitation for my dad before the funeral mass, an older Native American man approached me. He wore a dress shirt decorated with red and black ribbons sewn onto the gray polka-dotted cotton fabric. It was a ribbon shirt, worn for special occasions.

I’d learned a little bit about Odawa—pronounced oh-DAH-wuh—culture during a school assembly celebrating National American Indian Heritage Month. The local tribe put on an exhibition about the different styles of powwow dancing before inviting everyone to participate. The men and boys who sat around a large drum singing and pounding away wore ribbon shirts in different colors.

“You’re Lucy, right?” When I nodded, he smiled and continued speaking. “I’m Abe Charlevoix. From Charlevoix. A whole town named after me.” His easy laughter felt like a gentle hug. “I knew your dad from the ostomy support group. I’ll never forget his first time there. Everyone introducing themselves. They all had these sob stories: ‘oh, poor me, cancer, my life is over,’” he said, using a falsetto voice for the gloomy folks. “I told your dad, ‘Don’t listen to these yahoos. I had my colostomy for twenty years now. Went back to work driving a truck six weeks after surgery.’ That surprised your dad. He worried about you, but I said you’d deal with it just fine if he dealt with it just fine.”

“He did deal with it just fine,” I said, feeling lighter for the first time since my dad died. “He was too weak to swim with me, but he’d still toss pennies into the deep end for me to find. He was right there at the edge of the pool with his legs dangling in the water. If I’d needed him, he would have reached me within seconds.”

It was the most I’d shared with anyone other than my dad.

Abe Charlevoix was talkative. He said my dad started out shy and quiet in the group. After about a year, he asked Abe to meet after the meeting.

“So we went for coffee, me and your dad.”

“But my dad didn’t drink coffee,” I pointed out.

“It wasn’t about the coffee,” he said. “When someone wants to talk, coffee is a good excuse to sit together and shoot the breeze.”

“What did he want to talk about?”

“Mostly about you. A little bit about me. We started having coffee every month after the support group. Well, I drank coffee. Your dad was more of a tap water or herbal tea guy.”

It was true. My dad liked the occasional cup of chamomile tea.

“Anyway, he liked the stories I told. Said he never learned anything about Native Americans growing up. I told him, ‘Ask me anything. I’ll tell you everything I know. And what I don’t know, I’ll make up.”

Abe Charlevoix’s grin felt like when my dad sang his Dolce Lucy song. It was corny and sweet and made me feel special.

“Would you tell me the stories you told him?”

Before he could answer, my mother approached in a rush.